No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Working memory WM
Abstract
The term working memory refers to a brain system that provides temporary storage and manipulation of the information necessary
for such complex cognitive tasks as language comprehension, learning, and reasoning. This definition has evolved from the
concept of a unitary short-term memory system. Working memory has been found to require the simultaneous storage and processing
of information. It can be divided into the following three subcomponents: (i) the central executive, which is assumed to be
an attentional-controlling system, is important in skills such as chess playing and is particularly susceptible to the effects
of Alzheimer's disease; and two slave systems, namely (ii) the visuospatial sketch pad, which manipulates visual images and
(iii) the phonological loop, which stores and rehearses speech-based information and is necessary for the acquisition of both
native and second-language vocabulary.
Psychologists have generally focused on memory from a very narrow perspective: an individual, alone with their thoughts, remembering their own personal past. However, our memory is an eclectic mix of autobiographical details, vicarious memories, stories from our friends and family, general knowledge and filled-in blanks with imagination. It is indeed a reconstructive process, yet I argue that this reconstruction is social, collective and extended. In this article, I analyse a 3-minute excerpt from an interview with a Second World War veteran’s daughter, which serves as a rich example of the multitude of memory and how they collide and intertwine within a single narrative to bring meaning to a particular past. I propose a critical reflection on the way cognitive psychologists generally approach the concept of memory and how micro-analysis can help broaden this perspective. Finally, I reflect on my particular position in the context of this special issue.
Humans efficiently perceive high-level relations and use them to facilitate grouping. For instance, interactive agents can be grouped into coherent social units (social grouping), while nonsocial relations like physically compatible shapes or semantic relatedness form nonsocial grouping. In this study, we examined how grouping based on high-level relations functions in working memory (WM). While previous studies have demonstrated that both social and nonsocial relations enhance WM capacity for the relations themselves, these findings provide only a partial answer to how high-level relations function in WM. A critical yet unresolved issue is whether and how high-level relations organize content orthogonal to these relations. We addressed this question from the perspective of feature binding, investigating the impact of social and nonsocial grouping on WM for bound features. Participants memorized bound colors corresponding to social or nonsocial grouping cues. Their responses were fit to the swap model to isolate distinct representational components (the bias and standard deviation of memory, swap rate, and guess rate). Across 13 experiments, we found that grouping based on high-level relations can organize content orthogonal to these relations, but only when the contents themselves are chunkable. Moreover, social and nonsocial grouping functions differently in WM. While social grouping cues led to both enhanced accuracy (absolute memory bias) and increased confusion (swap rate) during maintenance, nonsocial grouping only resulted in heightened confusion during encoding. Together, our results provide a comprehensive account of how grouping based on high-level relations functions in WM and reveal qualitative differences between social and nonsocial grouping.
Developing the Real/Symbolic/Imaginary ontology of education outlined in chapter one, this chapter situates the figure of the teacher as a subject within that ontology. Initially, via the concept of objet a, the chapter explores Lacan’s own allusions to teaching surrounding pedagogy, topics, and relationship with students. It discusses the formal aspects of Lacan’s educational methods such as cartels and a new psychoanalytic school. The chapter then goes on to explain Lacan’s figure of the split subject specifically as a teacher through the concept of the signifier. The teacher as a subject is further presented as the ego ideal/ideal ego figure found in Lacan’s accounts of the Mirror Stage and the gaze, all of which contribute to constructing a particular form of subject found only in the space of the classroom.
Teaching is reconsidered as a form of staging that is ordered by the idea of pedagogy as a powerful, though elusive, dimension of the Symbolic order of education. Is pedagogy as straightforward as the standard transmission and active engagement models suggest? Essentializing developmental models are put into question, and the easy assumption of the activation of pedagogy is approached through psychoanalytic rethinking of the dynamics of institutional space. The role of ‘lack’ is considered in terms of the teacher’s experience of pleasure in teaching while the general order of knowledge is reviewed from a Lacanian perspective giving an emphasis to the interplay between discourse and incompletion. Finally, the role of the idea of potential is deliberated in relation to the dynamic function of lack in education while the governing role of education, through various ‘points de capiton’ gets foregrounded.
The brain learns an internal model of the environment through sensory experiences, which is essential for high-level cognitive processes. Recent studies show that spontaneous activity reflects such a learned internal model. Although computational studies have proposed that Hebbian plasticity can learn the switching dynamics of replayed activities, it is still challenging to learn dynamic spontaneous activity that obeys the statistical properties of sensory experience. Here, we propose a pair of biologically plausible plasticity rules for excitatory and inhibitory synapses in a recurrent spiking neural network model to embed stochastic dynamics in spontaneous activity. The proposed synaptic plasticity rule for excitatory synapses seeks to minimize the discrepancy between stimulus-evoked and internally predicted activity, while inhibitory plasticity maintains the excitatory-inhibitory balance. We show that the spontaneous reactivation of cell assemblies follows the transition statistics of the model’s evoked dynamics. We also demonstrate that simulations of our model can replicate recent experimental results of spontaneous activity in songbirds, suggesting that the proposed plasticity rule might underlie the mechanism by which animals learn internal models of the environment.
The present commentary is a response to a special issue on effort regulation during learning and problem solving [De Bruin, A. B. H., Janssen, E. M., Waldeyer, J., & Stebner, F. (2025). Fostering Monitoring and Regulation of Effort. Educational Psychology Review]. Its contributions discuss and investigate the role of effort against both, Cognitive Load Theory and theories of self-regulated learning, thereby considering cognitive as well as motivational perspectives. The present commentary reflects upon challenges that arise from the attempt of linking these two perspectives. As a conclusion, I suggest that as a research community we need to avoid possible jangle fallacies when discussing the concept of effort and its influencing factors from multiple perspectives, attempt to formulate integrated theories of cognition and motivation rather than just mapping isolated assumptions, and consider the consequences of how we prompt learners to give subjective appraisals with respect to their learning experiences.
Abstract
The Unified Competition Model (UCM) explains how interference arising from entrenched neural connections to L1 words can hinder learning new L2 vocabulary. However, support processes such as resonance and cue-strength, when distributed in time, enhance L2 word retrieval. Recent L2 research suggests that cross-modal cues (e.g., picture, voice, text) enhanced by technology can optimize teaching/learning outcomes. This study used a quasi-experimental design consisting of three EFL classes (n = 60) to examine effects of input modalities on learners’ vocabulary gains. The classes were assigned to two experimental groups, receiving fully or partially-captioned audiovisual input, and one control group, receiving text-only input. L2 input was followed by scheduled (or spaced) resonance-building practices targeting new words. Learners’ working memory (WM) capacity was assessed using listening-span tasks. Results revealed that both multimodal groups outperformed the unimodal group in vocabulary gains. The novel lexis-captioning mode yielded similar gains to full captions, with higher WM learners showing more considerable improvement. In conclusion, combining multimodal input, purposeful captioning, and WM capacity enhances L2 lexical resonance and vocabulary learning.
Keywords:
Unified competition model (UCM)vocabulary resonanceL2 multimodalityfull/partial captioning modesWM
Introduction
Pain experiences are subjective and can vary significantly between individuals, yet pain is universally communicated using speech. Analysis of speech itself may be clinically informative about pain. Speaking itself may also relieve pain as it does during basic vocalisations. Whether complex speech relieves pain is not known. Understanding speech when pain is being experienced and whether certain speech features are associated with general pain sensitivity holds promise for identifying pain markers.
Objectives
We investigated the (1) effect of acute pain on speech characteristics, (2) effect of speech on pain intensity, and (3) association between pain-free speech characteristics and pain sensitivity.
Methods
Speech metrics were derived from 25 healthy adults who performed speech tasks that fit along a continuum of cognitive complexity, with and without acute exposure to noxious heat stimuli. Pain ratings were also recorded.
Results
Speech was pain-sensitive: under acute pain syllabic rate and speech-to-pause ratio increased during a monologue task, while mean sound pressure level decreased during vowel production. Exploratory correlations between pain-free speech characteristics and baseline pain sensitivity were significant. Increased speech-to-pause ratio was associated with increased cold pain sensitivity, while decreased mean sound pressure level was related to higher pressure pain sensitivity and impaired conditioned pain modulation. Producing a monologue reduced pain more than saying /a:/.
Conclusion
Speech can serve as a marker of acute pain. It also correlates with pain sensitivity, suggesting that speech could be useful for pain assessment and management.
People are able to reason about the physical dynamics of everyday objects. Bute there are theoretical disagreements about the computations that underlie this ability. One proposal is that people are running an approximate mental simulation of their environment. However, such a simulation must be limited in its resources. We applied the notion of a resource-bound simulation to a task of reasoning about liquids and showed that people’s changing behavior can be explained by an approximate simulation that hits a resource limit after some time elapses. In Experiments 1 and 2, people performed well on tasks that asked them to estimate the time-to-fill and water level of different containers when filled over short periods of time (1–7 s). Experiment 3 shows systematic biases in visual volume estimation, which further strengthens the proposal that people are using a simulation to solve the first two experiments. Experiment 4 extends the reasoning time for the time-to-fill task and shows the existence of a “switch point,” as expected from a resource-bound simulation model. The model also accounts for individual differences: People who perform worse on a digit-span task have an earlier switch point. Our work argues for the theoretical proposal that people are using mental simulations to reason about intuitive physics but further informs the suggestion that these simulations are limited in resources.
Research on the neurophysiological effects of emotional face processing, working memory (WM) load, and their interaction in dual‐tasks remains scarce. Therefore, we conducted a combined magnetoencephalography eye‐tracking study with 47 participants. The dual‐task temporally interleaved a facial emotion discrimination task with a visuo‐spatial n‐back task. Source‐space cluster analyzes of event‐related magnetic fields (ERFs) and oscillations revealed significant main effects of emotional expression and WM load. During emotion discrimination, enhanced ERFs for negative facial expressions located across the insula, ACC, and face‐specific occipital regions suggest amplified emotion processing but also the recruitment of attentional control mechanisms. During the n‐back phase, emotional faces did not affect evoked responses when they were task‐irrelevant. Interaction trends in pupil dilation indicated that emotion‐specific processing is diminished under high WM load. During the n‐back phase, increased WM load reduced alpha and low beta oscillations in temporo‐ and parieto‐occipital areas. In addition, reduced target fixations in the presence of negative facial distractors indicated a tendency toward emotion‐specific interference. Furthermore, sustained increased WM load affected perceived valence, pupil size, and reaction time in both subtasks. A convergence of neurophysiological, physiological, and behavioural findings points to specific processing modes with greater resource depletion for negative expressions and high WM load in the dual‐task. In conclusion, the study advanced our understanding of (a) circumstances under which emotional faces modulate ERFs in a dual‐task, (b) mechanisms underlying emotion discrimination, (c) interaction effects of emotional expression and WM load in gaze behavior, as well as (d) how WM‐related oscillatory alpha and beta power is affected by increasing load.
Introduction
The human brain processes 83% of information visually and 11% auditorily, with visual perception dominating multisensory integration. While audiovisual congruence enhances cognitive performance, the impact of audiovisual incongruence on working memory (WM) remains controversial. This study investigated how audiovisual incongruence affects WM performance under varying cognitive loads.
Methods
Two experiments employed a dual 2-back+Go/NoGo paradigm with 120 college students. Experiment 1 used alphanumeric stimuli (numbers/letters), while Experiment 2 utilized complex picture stimuli. Participants completed WM tasks under three conditions: visual-only, auditory-only, and incongruent audiovisual. Performance comparisons between unimodal and cross-modal conditions were analyzed using paired-samples t-tests.
Results
Experiment 1 revealed visual interference on auditory WM (p <.05) but minimal auditory interference on visual WM. Experiment 2 demonstrated bidirectional interference between modalities (both p <.001), with cross-modal competition intensifying under high cognitive load. Results indicated interference patterns were mediated by cognitive load dynamics rather than fixed sensory hierarchies.
Discussion
Audiovisual incongruence systematically disrupts WM performance, challenging conventional sensory dominance models. While low cognitive load permits strategic visual prioritization, high load triggers competitive cross-modal interactions. These findings suggest adaptive resource allocation mechanisms in WM that supersede strict visual supremacy principles, highlighting the context-dependent nature of multisensory integration.
Objectives: This study aims to investigate the relationship between working memory (WM), smartphone addiction and mental fatigue in physiotherapy and rehabilitation students. Materials and Methods: Smartphone addiction was assessed using the Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version (SAS-SV) and mental fatigue was assessed using the Mental Fatigue Scale (MFS). WM was assessed using the Working Memory Questionnaire (WMQ). Results: The study included 120 students with a mean age of 21.49±1.40 years. A statistically significant moderately positive relationship was found between the students’ WMQ and SAS-SV scores (p<0.001, r=0.423). There was a statistically significant moderately positive relationship between their WMQ and MFS scores (p<0.001, r=0.559). There was no significant difference in the students’ WMQ, SAS-SV, and MFS scores according to their grades (p>0.05). Conclusion: Smartphone addiction and mental fatigue negatively affect WM in Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation students. To improve WM, which is important for learning information, further studies are needed to reduce smartphone addiction.
Objective: This study focused on the effect of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) intake on psychological state and game performance during esports gameplay. Methods: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study was conducted with eight healthy male university students aged 20–24 years who regularly play esports. The participants ingested either 200 mg of GABA or a placebo prior to gameplay and then completed a standardized esports task using the Mobalytics Proving Ground™ (MPG), a perceptual-cognitive task within “League of Legends” designed to train and evaluate player performance. Subjective psychological states were assessed pre- and post-gameplay using the Profile of Mood States 2 (POMS2®) short version. Esports task performance was evaluated based on MPG scores. Results: GABA intake significantly reduced psychological confusion–bewilderment and fatigue in the POMS 2® short version during esports gameplay. Furthermore, the game scores were significantly higher in the GABA group compared to the placebo group. Conclusions: These findings suggest that GABA intake may serve as a potential strategy to enhance both the mental state and performance of esports players.
Executive functions are critical for the cognitive and behavioral development of preschool children and are essential for their overall development. However, existing research has predominantly focused on school-aged children, with limited experimental evidence exploring how structured motor learning activities influence executive functions in preschool children. This study aimed to compare the effects of structured motor learning activities and outdoor free play on the executive functions of preschool children specifically working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control. A randomized controlled trial was conducted with 80 preschool children aged 4–6, who were randomly assigned to an intervention group (n = 36) or a control group (n = 44). The intervention group participated in 30-minute structured motor learning sessions twice a week, over 12 weeks, while the control group engaged in same duration regular outdoor free play. Pre- and post-intervention executive functions were assessed using the EF-TOUCH. Multiple linear regression models were used to evaluate the effect of the intervention on executive functions. The intervention group demonstrated significant improvements (B = 0.20, 95% CI: 0.14–0.26) in working memory compared to the control group after controlling for pre-test score, age and gender. However, no significant effects were observed for inhibitory control (B=-0.07, 95% CI:-0.16-0.03) and cognitive flexibility (B=-0.03, 95% CI:-0.08-0.02). Structured motor learning intervention positively impacts preschool children’s working memory but its effects on inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility remain limited. Integrating structured motor learning with outdoor free play in preschool curricula may support the development of executive functions. Future studies should examine the impact of varying frequency, duration, and intensity of structured motor learning activities to develop more effective interventions for enhancing cognitive development in preschool children.
Purpose
The association between working memory and the self-perception of hearing difficulties in older adults is not well understood. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to investigate the relation between auditory working memory and self-reported hearing difficulties in older adults with varying degrees of pure-tone hearing loss.
Method
Twenty-four older adults with varying degrees of sensorineural hearing loss participated. Self-reported hearing difficulties were assessed using the Adult Auditory Performance Scale (AAPS). Auditory working memory was measured using the Word Auditory Recognition and Recall Measure (WARRM).
Results
Results revealed significant negative correlations between the WARRM recall score and the AAPS global, easy listening, noise, and complex listening scores. Pure-tone hearing was significantly correlated with self-reported hearing difficulty in easy listening environments (e.g., quiet and ideal listening) but was not for noise or complex listening. Regression analyses revealed that pure-tone hearing accounted for a significant amount of variability associated with the AAPS easy listening, whereas WARRM recall scores accounted for a significant amount of variability associated with AAPS noise and complex listening scores.
Conclusions
Findings suggest that cognitive factors, such as auditory working memory, contribute to the self-perception of hearing difficulty among older adults. Routine clinical measurement of self-reported hearing difficulties and auditory working memory may provide a more global assessment of the hearing challenges faced by older adults with pure-tone hearing loss.
This paper examines the connection between two distinct mental phenomena: attention and phenomenal consciousness. I identify two types of views. Equivalency views maintain that attention is both necessary and sufficient for phenomenal consciousness. Dissociationist views deny this. This paper presents a novel argument for dissociationism, by way of an empirical phenomenon called “inattentional blindness.” Inattentional blindness occurs when subjects engaged in an attention-demanding task fail to see an otherwise visible but task-irrelevant stimulus. Dialectically, IB is unanimously cited by proponents of equivalency views as providing empirical support for their claims. I argue this thinking is backward: short of evincing equivalency views, inattentional blindness experiments create a dilemma. Resolved in one way, this dilemma falsifies the sufficiency claim. Resolved in the other, it falsifies the necessity claim. Thus, short of supporting the view, IB shows equivalency views are false. I close by considering how this result also limits which dissociationist view enjoys empirical support as well.
The Child Attention Test 6.0 (TAI) was developed to assess attentional performance and visuospatial working memory in children from 8 to 11 years old through visual search tasks that involve putting into practice the perception of differences, visual discrimination, visual integration, perceptual speed, and memory of visuospatial information. It is an instrument that has validity and reliability indicators. It can be used in both clinical and educational settings. It has the advantage of having parallel forms to be applied in the case of studies with experimental research designs, such as before and after any intervention, or for monitoring of clinical or educational training programs.
Interpersonal synchrony plays a crucial role in education. This study investigated inter-brain synchrony (IBS) during remote education and its effects on learning outcomes, rapport, and behavioral synchrony. Twenty-eight participants conducted a vocabulary learning task with a remote teacher under two conditions: voice and webcam conditions. The results showed that participants formed a higher IBS with the remote teacher in the webcam condition. We also observed that the brain regions of frontopolar prefrontal cortex (FP-PFC) and left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) were positively associated with learning outcomes and rapport, respectively. Furthermore, we observed that the concurrent behavioral synchrony (BS) of eye movements was related to IBS in the left OFC. Our findings provide valuable insights for future research on interpersonal synchrony and their implications for the development of effective teaching methodologies in remote education.
Introduction
EMDR 2.0, an innovative approach rooted in the conventional Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), has garnered attention due to its promising outcomes. The application of EMDR, whether it is EMDR or EMDR 2.0 protocol, in a group format, especially for conditions like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, will provide significant opportunities in terms of economic feasibility and accessibility, ultimately leading to widespread use. Building on the established effectiveness of EMDR 2.0 in individual applications, this study examines its impact in group settings. This protocol is designed to provide a structured framework for implementing EMDR 2.0 within group contexts, paving the way for a nuanced understanding of its potential benefits in collective therapeutic settings. This study aims to investigate the efficacy of the online EMDR 2.0 Group Protocol(EMDR 2.0 GP) versus Improving Mental Health Training for Primary Care Residents(mhGAP) on individuals with a history of traffic accidents in a controlled way.
Methods
In this randomized-controlled study sample includes volunteers who were involved in traffic accidents and were given the randomized online EMDR 2.0 GP and mhGAP Stress management module. The participants were given a sociodemographic data form, Depression Anxiety Stress 21 scale (DASS-21) and Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R). Participants were evaluated with measurements before, after and “one month after the application.
Results
The mean age of the participants was 34.80(8.10) years and 88.0% (n=22) were female. The change in DASS-21 Anxiety (h²=0.136), Stress (h²=0.140), IES-R Avoidance (h²=0.134), Hyperarousal (h²=0.0148), Total (h²=0.223) scores of online EMDR 2.0 GP was determined to be statistically significant compared to the mhGAP group. However, no statistically significant difference was observed in DASS-21 Depression (h²=0.017), IES-R Intrusion(h²=0.094), scores between the two groups.
Discussion
The RCT of online EMDR 2.0 GP indicated that this newly developed protocol, when applied to groups, may be effective in reducing anxiety, stress, and traumatic symptoms among a non-clinical sample.
Clinical trial registration
https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/, identifier NCT05596903.
Background
Behavioral endocrinology studies in women suggest that higher circulating levels of the ovarian sex hormone estradiol (E2) may be linked to better working memory performance, especially under conditions of cognitive impairment (e.g., age‐related cognitive decline). Phases of the menstrual cycle characterized by different levels of E2 may therefore influence the degree to which women are vulnerable to the acute impairing effect of alcohol on working memory.
Methods
This study used a within‐subjects design to test the hypothesis that women are less sensitive to acute alcohol‐induced impairment of working memory during the late follicular phase of the menstrual cycle (when E2 is elevated) compared to the early follicular phase (when E2 is low). A sample of 75 premenopausal women completed two placebo‐controlled alcohol administration sessions during the early and late follicular phases, respectively. At both sessions, participants completed an N‐Back visual letter task of working memory first following placebo, then again 60 min after consuming a controlled dose of 0.6 g/kg alcohol.
Results
Working memory performance was impaired under alcohol relative to placebo at both the early and late follicular phases of the menstrual cycle. However, as predicted, the magnitude of this impairment was significantly less pronounced during the late versus early follicular phases.
Conclusions
Women are less vulnerable to the acute impairing effect of alcohol at the late follicular phase of the menstrual cycle when ovulation occurs, possibly as a function of heightened levels of circulating E2. Considered in the context of the broader literature, these findings provide novel evidence to suggest that specific phases of the menstrual cycle may differentially affect women's sensitivity to the acute effects of alcohol on particular cognitive functions.
This study investigated the relationship between indoor temperature, facial skin temperature, thermal sensation and cognitive performance in an office environment, aiming to develop a contactless predictive model for thermal sensation to optimize cognitive performance. Using thermographic imaging, facial skin temperature from four locations (forehead, nose, cheek and chin) were collected, while cognitive performance was assessed through the Operation Span Task (OSPAN) and Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT). Three machine learning algorithms (J48 Decision Tree, Logistic Model Tree and Random Forest) were applied to construct thermal sensation predictive models based on these data. Results demonstrated that facial skin temperatures are significantly correlated with cognitive performance, validating that factors such as facial skin temperature, indoor temperature and gender can predict thermal sensation with high accuracy (93.96% to 98.84%), depending on the algorithm and cognitive function. Findings indicate that a slightly cool environment could benefit response-related tasks (PVT) for both genders, while slightly warmer settings could optimize working memory tasks (OSPAN) for females, with a cool environment favoured for males. These insights underscore the potential for developing a contactless, personalized thermal management system that enhances cognitive function and reduces energy consumption by fine-tuning indoor climates to occupants’ needs, marking a step forward in occupant-centred building design.
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is important for learning and performing working memory tasks. However, its precise role for spatial and non-spatial working memory, and the role of different cell types in the circuits that maintain working memory remain poorly understood. To investigate this issue, we analyzed single-unit recordings from the PFC of monkeys during the passive viewing phase before they learned the task rules and after learning, during the execution of active working memory tasks (spatial and feature). Through cluster analysis of extracellular spike waveform features, we identified two classes of narrow-spiking neurons (putative inhibitory cells) and two classes of broad-spiking neurons (putative pyramidal cells). These putative cell classes exhibited distinct physiological characteristics, including baseline firing rates, baseline neural firing variability, and visual stimulus-evoked responses. Neuronal response modulation varied heterogeneously across these cell classes after training and performing active tasks. Training and execution of spatial working memory resulted in higher activity in all class types, highlighting the involvement of diverse prefrontal circuits in spatial information processing. In contrast, feature working memory training and execution affected activity of broad-spiking cell classes alone, suggesting less involvement of a prefrontal circuit in the representation of feature information. We also revealed hitherto unknown, differential effects of training and task execution on different broad-spiking cell types. One broad-spiking neuron subtype exhibited significant response modulation, with increased baseline firing rate, stimulus-evoked responses, and working memory-related firing rates. Another broad-spiking subtype showed decreased baseline firing rate and variability, which may optimize neural coding efficiency. This study advances our understanding of the functional heterogeneity within the PFC and the specialized contributions of different neuronal subtypes to cognitive processes.
Mind–body interventions involve practices that intentionally combine mental and physical fitness, showing promise for improving psychological and cognitive health in older adults. Limited research exists on adherence to these interventions and the demographic and psychosocial factors that may predict variability in compliance. In the current study, we identified key correlates—demographic, psychosocial, and cognitive—of adherence to two mind–body interventions. Baseline and intervention data were analyzed together from a randomized controlled trial of older adults who participated in two four-week mind–body interventions and completed practice logs ( n = 60). Adherence was defined as the average weekly self-reported minutes of homework practice during the intervention. Baseline correlates included education, sex assigned at birth, working memory score, emotion dysregulation, positive and negative affect, trait mindfulness, and depression. Partial least squares regression was used to identify latent components. A significant one-component solution from the final model explained 23.08% of the variance in practice minutes. Greater adherence was associated with mild depressive symptoms, difficulties with emotion regulation, and lower working memory scores. These findings suggest that participants with mild emotional and cognitive difficulties may be more likely to adhere to mind–body interventions. These results emphasize the target population likely to engage in mind–body interventions and may be valuable for designing tailored interventions and developing strategies to maximize adherence. This study was registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (#NCT03432754) on February 14, 2018.
Working memory training (WMT) has been demonstrated to enhance cognitive performance, yet the underlying neural mechanisms remain insufficiently understood. Brain network connectivity, particularly as measured by the participation coefficient (PC), offers a valuable framework for elucidating these neural changes. This study investigated the effects of WMT on brain network connectivity, utilizing PC as a primary assessment of network integration and segregation. The relationship between WMT-induced changes in PC and the density of specific neurotransmitter receptors was examined. Seventy-six healthy participants were randomly assigned to either a WMT group or a control group. After 8 wks of training, the WMT group exhibited significant cognitive improvements, especially in near and far transfer tasks. These behavioral improvements were accompanied by specific changes in brain connectivity, including a reduction in PC within the sensorimotor network and node-specific alterations in the left prefrontal cortex, temporo-occipital-parietal junction, and parietal operculum. Moreover, changes in PC were significantly correlated with the density of dopamine D2 receptors, mu-opioid receptors, and metabotropic glutamate receptor 5. These findings enhance our understanding of how WMT influences cognitive function and brain network connectivity, highlighting the potential for targeting specific networks and neurotransmitter systems in cognitive training interventions.
Background: A notable deficit in working memory (WM) is well established in schizophrenia. Nevertheless, the intricate relationship between various symptoms and WM impairment is still not fully understood. We use three distinct methodologies-symptom network analysis (SNA), Connectome-Based Predictive Modeling (CPM), and brain gene annotation enrichment analysis-to explore the connectome patterns that link WM deficits and symptoms, and their related gene expression. Methods: 255 patients with schizophrenia were recruited as two distinct samples. SNA was used to pinpoint the core psychiatric symptoms influenced by WM performance. CPM identified the subnetwork of the functional connectome that was recruited under the 2-back load of the N-back WM task, and predicted the severity of the SNA-based key symptoms. Gene annotation enrichment analysis explored the likely molecular biological processes underlying the symptom-predictive functional WM network. Results: SNA revealed that disorganized attention (G11 of PANSS) is most closely linked to WM performance in schizophrenia. The WM-based connectome significantly predicted disorganized attention (r = 0.278, p = 0.001, permutation-p = 0.046), and this model was validated in the second dataset (r = 0.274, p = 0.014). The pre-dictive network primarily involved the frontoparietal and frontolimbic networks. Gene enrichment analysis revealed a preferential role for cytoplasmic protein binding, indicating a potential molecular basis for the WM-related, symptom-predictive functional connectivity. Conclusions: Impaired WM performance in schizophrenia relates to frontoparietal and frontolimbic connectivity and preferentially influences the severity of disorganized attention, a clinically observable phenomenon. The potential role of cytoplasmic protein binding in WM deficits and attentional disorganization in schizophrenia warrants further investigation.
Background: Athletes with expertise in sports show extensive procedural and factual information, enhancing their ability to focus attention, use cues, and anticipate events. This study examined the differentiation of perceptual-cognitive skills by focusing on attentional cues, processing speed, and working memory. Methods: The component skill approach was used to assess differences in sports expertise levels using non-sport-specific cognitive measures of perceptual-cognitive skills. The study involved a total of 127 college athletes with a mean age of 20.23 years (SD = 3.08) and an average of 10.99 years of training. Among these participants, there were 43 female athletes with a mean age of 20.23 years (SD = 3.32) and 84 male athletes with a mean age of 20.22 years (SD = 2.98). We analyzed the cohort of students who did not engage in regular sports training, identifying them as the control group for our study. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was employed to analyze the measures of the SPT and CBT perceptual-cognitive tasks, treating them as separate dependent variables. The categorization of elite levels and participants is outlined below: there are 41 semi-elite athletes, 70 competitive elite athletes, 12 successful elite athletes, and 4 world-class elite athletes. Results: There were no differences in semi-elite and competitive elite athletes’ perceptual-cognitive skills regarding visual-spatial reaction time (Wilks’ λ = 0.956, p > 0.05), but there was a significant difference in the working memory span (Wilks’ λ = 0.804, p < 0.05). Conclusions: The study reports that elite college athletes have higher working memory, which is crucial for sport performance, compared to semi-elite athletes. However, no between-group differences were observed in reaction time.
El estudio de la memoria de trabajo se enmarca en el de las funciones ejecutivas. Estas capacidades apuntan a la realización de propósitos finalistas. Analizamos aquí la memoria en calidad de instancia psíquica y repasamos el camino seguido para delimitar el concepto y constructo de la memoria de trabajo en este marco. Analizamos sucintamente las alteraciones de estas funciones en las psicosis esquizofrénicas, y en las adicciones a drogas de abuso más frecuentes. Recordamos brevemente modelos translacionales de estudio de las alteraciones de la memoria de trabajo. Finalmente referimos el modelo translacional de memoria de trabajo propuesto por nosotros, su proyección sobre las psicosis esquizofrénicas y el substrato cerebral propuesto. Recientemente, el estudio de los cuadros de psicosis se ha visto desarrollado a través de estudios translacionales en animales de experimentación. La vinculación entre las drogas de adicción o de uso indebido con las psicosis ha favorecido el desarrollo de modelos translacionales. En esta revisión se vincula una función afectada en las psicosis esquizofrénicas con un sistema de neurotransmisión y un núcleo cerebral en un modelo traslacional. De este modo experimental se asigna aquí una fisiopatogenia a este trastorno presente en las psicosis esquizofrénicas, vinculándolo al estriado ventral o Nucleus Accumbens Septi y a la transmisión glutamatérgica de éste.
Why do people change their self-perceptions (i.e., self-concept) after receiving external, self-discrepant information? While recent theorizing posits that reflection is a prerequisite for such change, empirical evidence supporting this is sparse. Here, we investigated the role of reflection in self-concept change after feedback in six studies. In Studies 1a–e (total N = 2,422), participants received feedback regarding a self-concept domain and we assessed reflection as well as self-concept change. Across studies, the amount of reflection was positively correlated with self-concept change. In Study 2 ( N = 1,149), we experimentally varied whether participants were encouraged to reflect on the feedback and their self-concept or prevented from doing so via a distractor task. We found that self-concept change was larger after inducing (vs. suppressing) reflection. Exploratory analyses showed that the association between reflection and self-concept change was more pronounced for negative than for positive feedback in Studies 1a–e, but not Study 2.
Introduction
Perceptual learning of complex stimulus (such as faces or houses) are shown to be specific to the stimulus, indicating the plasticity of the human high-level visual cortex. However, limited understanding exists regarding the plasticity of the representation of complex stimuli in visual working memory (VWM) and its specificity.
Methods
To address this question, we adopted a delayed match-to-sample task to train the working memory for faces and houses. Subjects were trained for 6 days with neutral faces, happy faces, sad faces, and houses in Experiments 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively.
Results
The results revealed that training significantly increased the sensitivity (d’) to discriminate the visual representations in VWM in all four experiments. Furthermore, the learning effects of neutral faces were transferable to emotional faces and vice versa. However, the learning effects of emotional faces exhibited limited transfer to untrained emotional faces. More importantly, the transfer of learning effects between faces and houses was asymmetrical, i.e., only the learning effects of faces could transfer to houses, whereas the reverse was not true.
Discussion
These results highlight distinct cognitive processes underlying the training effects for different stimulus categories and provide valuable insights into the mechanisms of VWM improvement.
We argue that the debate over whether mental images are visual or spatial representations is based on the false premise that they must be one or the other. In support of the hypothesis that mental imagery has distinct visual and spatial components of representation, we (1) point out a correspondence between the notions of visual appearance and spatial location representations in visual neurophysiology, on the one hand, and the notions of visual and spatial representations as used in the debate about mental imagery, on the other; and (2) present the performance of a brain-damaged patient with impaired visual appearance representations on a variety of tasks used by cognitive psychologists on one side or other of the visual vs spatial imagery debate. The patient is severely impaired on tasks previously used to argue for the visual nature of imagery, but performs normally on tasks previously used to argue for the spatial nature of imagery. This implies that the two groups of tasks tap distinct types of representation, which are neurologically dissociable and hence comprise functionally independent subsystems of imagery representation.
Primary memory (or short-term memory), according to models such as Sperlingis, maintains a substantial amount of its information by storing it in an auditory sensory memory. Since the auditory sensory memory is used to store memory information these models predict that concurrent auditory stimulation should destroy memory information and, hence, reduce recall performance. To test this hypothesis, a foreign language was presented over earphones while subjects performed a serial recall task with visual presentations and written recall. The subjects were told to ignore the noise. In Experiment I the presence of the irrelevant foreign language noise reduced recall performance on phonologically different lists but it did not reduce performance on phonologically similar lists. Passive articulatory restraint had little effect. In Experiment II this noise effect was eliminated after 30 sec of silent arithmetic, indicating that the noise effect is a primary memory phenomenon.
Lists of letters varying in length and in acoustic confusability were presented for immediate probed recall in 40 undergraduates. Presentation was either visual (with nonarticulation, silent articulation, or articulation aloud) or auditory (with nonarticulation or silent articulation). It was found that recent visual items which were articulated gave acoustic confusability effects intermediate between the heavy effects obtained when retrieval was ostensibly from an auditory afterecho and the negligible effects obtained when retrieval was ostensibly based on visual memory. Results suggest that articulation enhances the discriminability particularly of recent items in short-term memory (STM), and also that visual or auditory STM can be investigated independently of STM for speech-coded information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Two experiments, with 64 undergraduates, demonstrated that individual differences in working memory capacity affected the probability of resolving apparent inconsistencies within sentences. Resolution was less likely for Ss with small working memories, as assessed by a reading span test that taxed both processing and storage functions. It is suggested that Ss with small spans devoted so many resources to reading processes that they had less capacity for retaining earlier verbatim wording in working memory. Ss with small spans had particular difficulty recovering from inconsistencies when a sentence boundary intervened, which suggests that end-of-sentence processes taxed the poor reader more. Reading times were used to model the time course of integration. Detection and recovery increased processing time. Furthermore, detection was apparent on the first inconsistent word, suggesting that Ss attempted to integrate a word immediately and did not buffer several words before processing them semantically. (62 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Attempted to determine whether working memory processes measured by the Reading Span Test would be strongly associated with the ability to integrate information from different parts of a passage to infer an idea not explicitly stated in the passage. The study also assessed the influence of working memory processes on ability to encode explicitly stated and inferred information into long-term memory. 29 undergraduates were administered a letter span test and a reading span test. The ability to store and process information in working memory was shown to be positively related to (a) scores on a standardized reading comprehension test, (b) long-term memory encoding and retrieval of explicitly stated text information, and (c) integration of text information for the purpose of drawing inferences. Variations in only the storage capacity of working memory were not related to these measures. It is concluded that the ability to coordinate storage and process functions in working memory may be an important determinant of text processing skill, especially with respect to encoding information into long-term memory. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
According to the primary memory masking hypothesis, speech noise increases serial recall errors made on visually presented lists because the list items are recoded and stored as auditory memory representations which are masked by the noise. In four experiments, both the spatial location of speech noise and its intensity were systematically varied to determine how they influenced recall. The results were consistent with the assumption that primary memory masking takes place in the preperceptual auditory store, which has been inferred from backward recognition masking studies, but were inconsistent with the assumption that primary memory masking takes place in the precategorical acoustic store, which has been inferred from modality and suffix studies.
A previous study (Baddeley et al., 1986) explored the hypothesis that patients suffering from dementia of the Alzheimer type (AD) are particularly impaired in the functioning of the central executive component of working memory. It showed that, when patients are required to perform 2 concurrent tasks simultaneously, the AD patients are particularly impaired, even when level of performance on the individual tasks is equated with that of age-matched controls. Although the results were clear, interpretation was still complicated by 2 issues: first, the question of comparability of performance on the separate tests between AD and control patients: secondly, the question of whether our results could be interpreted simply in terms of a limited general processing capacity being more taxed by more difficult dual tasks than by the individual tasks performed alone.
The present study followed up the AD and control patients after 6 and 12 mths. We were able to allow for the problem of comparability of performance by using patients as their own control. Under these conditions, there is a very clear tendency for dual task performance to deteriorate while single task performance is maintained. A second experiment varied difficulty within a single task in which patients and controls were required to categorize words as belonging to 1, 2 or 4 semantic categories. There was a clear effect of number of categories on performance and a systematic decline in performance over time. There was, however, no interaction between task difficulty as measured by number of alternatives and rate of deterioration, suggesting that the progressive deterioration in performance shown by AD patients is a function of whether single or dual task performance is required, and is not dependent on simple level of task difficulty.
Implications for the analysis of the central executive component of working memory are discus
The cognitive processes in a widely used, nonverbal test of analytic intelligence, the Raven Progressive Matrices Test (Raven, 1962), are analyzed in terms of which processes distinguish between higher scoring and lower scoring subjects and which processes are common to all subjects and all items on the test. The analysis is based on detailed performance characteristics, such as verbal protocols, eye-fixation patterns, and errors. The theory is expressed as a pair of computer simulation models that perform like the median or best college students in the sample. The processing characteristic common to all subjects is an incremental, reiterative strategy for encoding and inducing the regularities in each problem. The processes that distinguish among individuals are primarily the ability to induce abstract relations and the ability to dynamically manage a large set of problem-solving goals in working memory.
Does visual imagery engage some of the same representations used in visual perception? The evidence collected by cognitive psychologists in support of this claim has been challenged by three types of alternative explanation: Tacit knowledge, according to which subjects use nonvisual representations to simulate the use of visual representations during imagery tasks, guided by their tacit knowledge of their visual systems; experimenter expectancy, according to which the data implicating shared representations for imagery and perception is an artifact of experimenter expectancies; and nonvisual spatial representation, according to which imagery representations are partially similar to visual representations in the way they code spatial relations but are not visual representations. This article reviews previously overlooked neuropsychological evidence on the relation between imagery and perception, and discusses its relative immunity to the foregoing alternative explanations. This evidence includes electrophysiological and cerebral blood flow studies localizing brain activity during imagery to cortical visual areas, and parallels between the selective effects of brain damage on visual perception and imagery. Because these findings cannot be accounted for in the same way as traditional cognitive data using the alternative explanations listed earlier, they can play a decisive role in answering the title question.
The relations between reading time and memory span were studied in four languages: English, Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabic. Reading rate was measured either in speeded reading of digits or in normal-pace reading of stories. Faster speeded reading and normal-pace reading rates for a given language were associated with larger memory span for speakers of that language. These relations, which were shown to be monotonically related to the number of syllables or phonemes per item, extend the within-language word-length effect reported by Baddeley, Thomson and Buchanan (1975), across languages. In addition, these findings demonstrate a form of linguistic relativity: a relation between simple surface-structural features of language (number of syllables) and cognitive processing (memory span and reading rate). It is argued that this linguistic relativity may be limited by trade-offs between surface features and common linguistic practice.
Five experiments are described concerning verbal short-term memory performance of a patient who has a very markedly reduced verbal span. The results of the first three, free recall, the Peterson procedure and an investigation of proactive interference, indicate that he has a greatly reduced short-term memory capacity, while the last two, probe recognition and missing scan, show that this cannot be attributed to a retrieval failure. Since his performance on long-term memory tasks is normal, it is difficult to explain these results with theories of normal functioning in which verbal STM and LTM use the same structures in different ways. They also make the serial model of the relation between STM and LTM less plausible and support a model in which verbal STM and LTM have parallel inputs.Present address: Psychology Department, University College, London.
This paper is concerned with the relationship between two central constructs—reasoning ability and working-memory capacity—which arise from two distinct bodies of literature on individual differences in cognition, the psychometric and the information-processing, respectively. In four separate studies (N = 723, 412, 415, and 594), we assessed reasoning ability using various tests from the psychometric literature, and working-memory capacity using tests constructed according to Baddeley's (1986) definition of working memory. Confirmatory factor analysis yielded consistently high estimates of the correlation between working-memory capacity and reasoning ability factors (r = .80 to .90). We also found differentiation between the two factors: Reasoning correlated comparatively highly with general knowledge; working-memory capacity correlated comparatively highly with processing speed. Inspection of residuals from model fitting suggested the existence of a verbal versus quantitative content factor. We discuss the implications of our results for what they tell us about the nature of reasoning, and the nature of working memory.
Five experiments are reported. These demonstrate that, in bilingual subjects, Welsh digits take longer to articulate than their English equivalents, and this difference is paralleled by the finding that digit span in Welsh is significantly smaller than that in English. These differences are attributable to bilingual word-length differences, and it is this, rather than intellectual differences, which explains why the norms for Welsh children on the digit span test of the Welsh Children's Intelligence Scale are reliably less than those for the same age American children tested on the similar digit span procedure of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. These findings lead to the prediction that mental calculation in the Welsh language will be more difficult than that in English.
An interaction between translation and storage in working memory is demonstrated. This finding accords with the working memory formalization of Baddeley & Hitch (1974). It is shown that translation towards the language of preference is faster than that in the reverse direction.
The complex span measure of working memory is a word/digit span measured while performing a secondary task. Two experiments investigated whether correlations between the complex span and reading comprehension depend on the nature of the secondary task and individual skill in that task. The secondary task did not have to be reading related for the span to predict reading comprehension. An arithmetic-related secondary task led to correlations with reading comprehension similar to those found when the secondary task was reading. The relationship remained significant when quantitative skills were factored out of the complex span/comprehension correlations. Simple digit and word spans (measured without a background task) did not correlate with reading comprehension and SAT scores. The second experiment showed that the complex span/comprehension correlations were a function of the difficulty of the background task. When the difficulty level of the reading-related or arithmetic-related background tasks was moderate, the span/comprehension correlations were higher in magnitude than when the background tasks were very simple, or, were very difficult.
The investigation of a patient with a selective impairment of phonological short-term memory has recently provided evidence that this system may be involved in long-term learning of novel words, for which a pre-existing semantic representation is not available (Baddeley, Papagno, & Vallar, 1988). The present series of experiments in normal subjects explored this hypothesis. We assessed the effects of phonological similarity and item length, which reflect the operation of the phonological short-term store and the rehearsal component of verbal memory, upon paired associate long-term learning of auditorily presented words and non-words. Phonological similarity affected the learning of novel words more than known words (Experiment 1); when a delay was interposed between presentation and recall, the disruptive effect was confined to novel words (Experiment 2). Also word length disrupted the learning of novel words, but not of known words (Experiment 3). These results tie in with neuropsychological evidence to suggest a role for phonological short-term memory in the learning of new words, and they have developmental implications for the study of language acquisition.
It is frequently assumed that the development of children's abilities in
short-term memory reflects changes in a unitary short-term store. This
approach makes only poor contact with recent research on adults, which
suggests the idea of a more complex `working memory' system consisting
of a limited-capacity central processor controlling a number of
special-purpose stores. Two such stores are (i) the articulatory loop, a
subsystem involved in subvocal rehearsal and associated with memory
span, and (ii) the visuo-spatial scratch-pad, involved in imagery. This
paper considers the applicability of the working memory framework to the
study of children's memory. In adults, memory span for words is affected
by their length, varying linearly with the rate at which they can be
articulated, and thus presumably rehearsed. Studies of the developmental
growth of memory span in children show that the same linear relation
describes performance, with older children's better memory associated
with faster rates of articulation. It appears from this that
developmental change corresponds to an increase in the efficiency of
subvocal rehearsal, with the decay characteristic of the articulatory
loop remaining constant. However, although this simple developmental
pattern is observed in memory for sequences of spoken words it is not
present when the items are nameable pictures. Further investigation
shows that older children use the articulatory loop to remember picture
names: their performance is sensitive to phonemic similarity of the
names and articulatory interference. However, younger children's
performance is not affected by either of these factors but is sensitive
to visual similarity. It is suggested that such children may be storing
material in the visuo-spatial scratch-pad. An additional aspect of
working memory is that separate mechanisms are thought to be involved in
memory span and the `recency effect', the tendency for recent items in a
list to be remembered well in unordered recall. A review of evidence
obtained with children suggests that age differences in these two
phenomena are independent. In general, therefore, it seems difficult to
interpret the developmental changes reported here in terms of a unitary
short-term store, and it is concluded that working memory provides a
more promising approach.
The memory performance of patients suffering from senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT) (N = 29), normal subjects of equivalent age and education (N = 58), and young normal controls (N = 42) was tested using free recall and verbal and nonverbal span. Three measures were derived from the free recall task: primacy based on the first item, secondary memory based on the middle serial positions, and primary memory based on recency and the Waugh-Norman correction factor. The SDAT patients differed from the normal elderly on all free recall and span measures except for primary memory. The elderly were clearly inferior to the young on secondary memory, and were marginally poorer on primary memory and the two span measures. Three possible explanations of this pattern of results are considered, based on the dichotomous modal model of memory, levels of processing, and working memory. It is suggested that the assumption that SDAT patients suffer from a deficit in the central executive component of working memory offers the best of these interpretations.
Sequences of 6 letters of the alphabet were visually presented for immediate recall to 387 subjects. Errors showed a systematic relationship to original stimuli. This is held to meet a requirement of the decay theory of immediate memory.
The same letter vocabulary was used in a test in which subjects were required to identify the letters spoken against a white noise background. A highly significant correlation was found between letters which confused in the listening test, and letters which confused in recall.
The role of neurological noise in recall is discussed in relation to these results. It is further argued that information theory is inadequate to explain the memory span, since the nature of the stimulus set, which can be defined quantitatively, as well as the information per item, is likely to be a determining factor.
Investigated the possibility of a causal relationship between phonological memory and vocabulary acquisition by testing the abilities of 19 5–6 yr old children high and 18 low in repetition performance to learn labels for unfamiliar toy animals. Low-repetition Ss were slower at learning phonologically unfamiliar names such as "Pimas" for the toys, although there was no difference in learning speed for familiar names such as "Thomas." The 2 groups also differed 1 day later in their retention of the labels that had initially been learned. Results suggest that immediate memory processes are directly involved in the learning of new vocabulary items in young children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Investigated 24 7–8 yr olds' use of implicit inferences in understanding stories. Two groups of Ss, differentiated by their ability at text comprehension, read 4 short stories and were asked a series of questions after each one. Results show that skilled readers were better than less skilled readers at answering questions from memory shortly after reading a story, both when the questions could be answered directly from the text and when they required an inference. However, when the text was made available, the less skilled group remained poorer at answering questions that required an inference, although their performance on literal questions improved to the same level as that of the skilled group. Results support the idea that a major distinguishing characteristic of skilled readers is that they are good at making inferences that enable them to relate one idea in a text to another and to general knowledge. Results do not support the claim that differences in ability to make inferences can be attributed to differences in memory for prose. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This book contains papers concerned with awareness, control, selection and other factors involved in attention. The works presented are based on and influenced by the ideas of Donald Broadbent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A patient with grossly defective short-term memory but fluent speech was studied in order to pinpoint the locus of the deficit. Her immediate memory for consonant sequences showed a clear phonological similarity effect with auditory presentation, but no effect of similarity when presentation was visual. She showed no effect of articulatory suppression and no effect of word length on span, both of which suggest that she was not using subvocal rehearsal. A further test showed that this was not due to her inability to articulate rapidly since her rate of repeating the number sequence 1–10 and of the alphabet was comparable with normal control subjects. These results are interpreted in terms of the articulatory loop component of a working memory model. It is suggested that the loop comprises a phonological store, with obligatory access by auditory spoken material, and optional access through the control process of subvocal rehearsal. Our patient appears to suffer from a defect of the phonological store. This removes the normal advantage gained from using subvocal rehearsal, and induces her to rely instead on visual storage.
A series of experiments studied the effect of unattended speech on immediate memory for visually presented digits. Memory performance showed clear impairment, with the degree of impairment being a function of the phonological similarity of the irrelevant words to the visually presented digits. In contrast, the semantic characteristics of the unattended speech did not influence performance. Requiring the subject to suppress articulation removed the disrupting effect of irrelevant speech. These results are interpreted in terms of two separate memory systems of which one relies on a phonological code. The system is accessible in two ways, through auditory presentation leading to obligatory registration of the material, or through an optional subvocal rehearsal process.
Two experiments studied individual differences among normal adults in performance on the Nelson-Denny reading test to cast light on the processes involved in reading. Experiment 1 correlated reading comprehension with performance on the Daneman and Carpenter working memory span test, vocabulary, lexical decision with both homophonous and nonhomophonous nonwords, and Posner's letter matching task, based on both physical and name matching. Working memory span proved to be a significant predictor as did lexical decision with nonhomophonous nonwords, letter name matching, and vocabulary. A derived measure indicating degree of phonological coding in lexical decision was only weakly correlated with comprehension while the physical name match difference on the Posner task was uncorrelated with reading performance. A second experiment explored further the working memory span task, comparing it with a nonlinguistic span test devised by Case. Kurland, and Goldberg based on memory and counting. While the verbal working memory measure again correlated significantly with comprehension, the counting measure was much more weakly related. As in Experiment 1, vocabulary also correlated significantly with comprehension. It is concluded that reading comprehension is dependent on a number of separable components including vocabulary, working memory, and a general lexical access process.
Evidence for a dichotomy between long-term memory (LTM) and short-term memory (STM) comes from: (a) amnesic patients with a normal digit span but defective LTM, and (b) tasks comprising two components, one labile (STM) and the other stable (LTM). This study examines the compatibility of (a) and (b) by comparing the performance of amnesic and control Ss on immediate and delayed free recall, the Peterson short-term forgetting task, development of PI in STM, minimal paired-associate learning, digit span, and the Hebb repeated digit-sequence technique. Results suggest that amnesic Ss have normal STM but defective LTM. There is some evidence of a stable component in certain STM tasks, on which amnesic Ss are also unimpaired. Implications for the dichotomy between STM and LTM are discussed.
A number of experiments explored the hypothesis that immediate memory span is not constant, but varies with the length of the words to be recalled. Results showed: (1) Memory span is inversely related to word length across a wide range of materials; (2) When number of syllables and number of phonemes are held constant, words of short temporal duration are better recalled than words of long duration; (3) Span could be predicted on the basis of the number of words which the subject can read in approximately 2 sec; (4) When articulation is suppressed by requiring the subject to articulate an irrelevant sound, the word length effect disappears with visual presentation, but remains when presentation is auditory. The results are interpreted in terms of a phonemically-based store of limited temporal capacity, which may function as an output buffer for speech production, and as a supplement to a more central working memory system.
Two experiments are reported which examine the effects of word duration on memory span in subjects of different ages. The same linear function relating recall to speech rate (assessed by the speed of repeating words) fits the results of subjects ranging in age from 4 years old to adulthood. It is concluded that developmental increases in short-term memory span can be explained in terms of increases in speech rate and that there is no evidence for an increase in short-term memory capacity. Analyses of the children's speech suggests that increases in speech rate with age reflect increases in the speed of articulation of individual words, rather than any change in the duration of pauses between successive words or changes in coarticulation between words.
Individual differences in reading comprehension may reflect differences in working memory capacity, specifically in the trade-off between its processing and storage functions. A poor reader's processes may be inefficient, so that they lessen the amount of additional information that can be maintained in working memory. A test with heavy processing and storage demands was devised to measure this trade-off. Subjects read aloud a series of sentences and then recalled the final word of each sentence. The reading span, the number of final words recalled, varied from two to five for 20 college students. This span correlated with three reading comprehension measures, including verbal SAT and tests involving fact retrieval and pronominal reference. Similar correlations were obtained with a listening span task, showing that the correlation is not specific to reading. These results were contrasted with traditional digit span and word span measures which do not correlate with comprehension.
Since the 1960s, there has been controversy as to whether long-term learning might depend on some form of temporary short-term storage. Evidence that patients with grossly impaired memory span might show normal learning was, however, particularly problematic for such views. We reexamine the question by studying the learning capacity of a patient, P.V., with a very pure deficit in short-term memory. A series of experiments compare her learning capacity with that of matched controls. The first experiment shows that her capacity to learn pairs of meaningful words is within the normal range. A second experiment examines her capacity to learn to associate a familiar word with an unfamiliar item from another language. With auditory presentation she is completely unable to perform this task. Further studies show that when visual presentation is used she shows evidence of learning, but is clearly impaired. It is suggested that short-term phonological storage is important for learning unfamiliar verbal material, but is not essential for forming associations between meaningful items that are already known. Implications for the possible role of a phonological short-term store in the acquisition of vocabulary by children are discussed.
This study explores the hypothesis that the short-term phonological storage component of working memory may play a role in the acquisition of vocabulary by young children. In a longitudinal design, the vocabulary skills of 104 children entering school between the ages of 4 and 5 were tested and retested 1 year later. On both occasions, phonological memory was investigated by requiring a child to repeat back nonwords varying in length and complexity, while nonverbal intelligence and reading were assessed using standard tests. The phonological memory score was highly correlated with vocabulary at both age 4 (r = .525) and age 5 (r = .572), in both cases accounting for a substantial and significant proportion of the variance when all other predictors are removed by stepwise regression. Phonological memory at age 4 also accounted for a significant amount of variance in vocabulary score at age 5, over and above that accounted for by the vocabulary score the previous year. Although these relationships are necessarily correlational in nature, the data are certainly consistent with the view that phonological memory is involved in the acquisition of new vocabulary in children. Possible mechanisms accounting for this relationship are discussed.
The phonological memory skills of a group of children with disordered language development were compared with those of two control groups, one group matched on verbal abilities and the other matched on nonverbal intelligence. The language-disordered children were poorer at repeating single nonwords and recalling word lists than even the younger children of matched verbal abilities. The language-disordered children were, however, sensitive to both the phonological similarity and word length of the memory lists, except for the longest lists. The results of two further experiments indicate that the poor memory performance of the language-disordered children is unlikely to be due to either impaired perceptual processing or to slow articulation rates. Our proposal is that a deficit of phonological storage in working memory may underpin the poor memory performance of the language-disordered children, and could play a central role in their disordered language development.
Sumario: The present study compares the effect of noise with that of unattended speech. Three experiments required the immediate serial recall of sequences of nine visually presented digits accompained by silence, noise or unattended speech in an unfamiliar language. It is suggested that noise does not interfere with short-term memory but that unattended speech does impair performance by disrupting the articulatory loop component of working memory. Implications for studies of noise pollution are discussed
This study explored the hypothesis that patients suffering from dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) are particularly impaired in the functioning of the Central Executive component of working memory, and that this will be reflected in the capacity of patients to perform simultaneously two concurrent tasks. DAT patients, age-matched controls and young controls were required to combine performance on a tracking task with each of three concurrent tasks, articulatory suppression, simple reaction time to a tone and auditory digit span. The difficulty of the tracking task and length of digit sequence were both adjusted so as to equate performance across the three groups when the tasks were performed alone. When digit span or concurrent RT were combined with tracking, the deterioration in performance shown by the DAT patients was particularly marked.
It has been shown that short-term memory (STM) for word sequences is grossly impaired when acoustically similar words are used, but is relatively unaffected by semantic similarity. This study tests the hypothesis that long-term memory (LTM) will be similarly affected. In Experiment I subjects attempted to learn one of four lists of 10 words. The lists comprised either acoustically or semantically similar words (A and C) or control words of equal frequency (B and D). Lists were learned for four trials, after which subjects spent 20 min. on a task involving immediate memory for digits. They were then asked to recall the word list. The acoustically similar list was learned relatively slowly, but unlike the other three lists showed no forgetting. Experiment II showed that this latter paradox can be explained by assuming the learning score to depend on both LTM and STM, whereas the subsequent retest depends only on LTM. Experiment III repeats Experiment I but attempts to minimize the effects of STM during learning by interposing a task to prevent rehearsal between the presentation and testing of the word sequences. Unlike STM, LTM proved to be impaired by semantic similarity but not by acoustic similarity. It is concluded that STM and LTM employ different coding systems.
Four experiments are described which demonstrate a conflict between reading verbal messages and imagining the spatial relations described by those messages. Listening to the same messages did not produce comparable interference with visualization. The conflict between reading and visualizing was obtained even when the subject previously had seen the referent of the message. In contrast, when the subject was induced to treat the messages as rote strings of words instead of visualizing their referents, reading was a more effective means of presentation than was listening.
Two interpretations of these results were proposed. (a) Visualization and reading compete of the use of neural pathways specialized for visual perception. (b) The process of reading hinders the conversion of input material into any non-verbal form; that is, reading forces the subject to deal with information in a more exclusively verbal form than does listening. It was suggested that regardless of interpretation this method provides a means of investigating the internal processes underlying concrete verbal reference.
The case of a left-hemisphere damaged patient with an impairment of auditory verbal memory span is described. The neuropsychological study showed a dissociation between short-term and long-term auditory verbal memory, which may be attributed to a selective defect of auditory verbal short-term memory. Since a tachistoscopic study displayed a short-term memory superiority of the left hemisphere, it can be argued that the performance for visual verbal stimuli may still be held by the left hemisphere, albeit computerized tomography showed a left-hemisphere lesion involving the whole language area.
The first wave of modern research on short-term memory was preoccupied with its existence as a valid system of memory. One subsequent development has been the application of the short-term/ long-term distinction to the study of individual and subject-population differences (aging, amnesia, and so on). Another development has been the investigation of how short-term memory articulates with such full-blown cognitive processes as reasoning, perception, and language comprehension. These efforts have now faltered, badly, in response to changing conceptions of human memory and unwelcome data. However, the properties of isolated, short-term memory subsystems continue to be identified. The sorts of evidence that have contributed to the fragmentation, if not the death, of an all-purpose short-term memory system have nonetheless advanced our knowledge of related cognitive processes. The study of such relationships is illustrated in the case of reading.
Progress in the Psychology of Language
- P Barnard
Alzheimer's Disease: Advances in Basic Research and Therapies
- J T Becker
The Psychology of Chess Skill
- D H Holding
Attention and Performance
- A D Baddeley